Always Already Ancient: Ruins in the Virtual World (original) (raw)

Playing with antiquity: Videogame receptions of the classical world

This chapter documents a range of video games which portray classical antiquity. Two trends are identified. One is empire-building, which tends to treat classical (especially Roman) history and seek factual accuracy. The other is hero-centred action, which tends to treat classical (especially Greek) myth and seek creative reinvention. The two trends often intersect in surprising ways.

Awakening in ruins: The virtual spectacle of the end of the city in video games

With reference to Walter Benjamin’s work on nineteenth-century Paris, and Debord’s work on the spectacle, this article argues that the depiction of ruined cities in video games – as virtual ruins of the present – simultaneously reproduces the empty novelty of the commodity (the phantasmagoria of progress-oriented civilization), and offers a vision of failed progress through counter-spectacle. One means of understanding Benjamin’s dreamworld of modernity is through ruins and rubble – not only as material remnants, but in other visual or artistic forms that might reveal the illusion of progress as a fallacy, particularly in contrast to an urban-focused commodity capitalism. With an emphasis on Fallout 3, Hellgate: London and The Last of Us, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series this article argues that, if cities can be read as dreamworlds, and films, art and ruination as the means for awakening, then urban destruction in the virtual sphere can provide a counter to the collective dream of eternal progress.

Recreating the Past: Historical Narratives and Virtual Environments of Video Games

authors Seda Güntan, Bilge Ar, Mekansal Araştırmalar Dergisi / Journal of Spatial Research, 2(1), 1-10., 2024

Virtual environments in video games have fundamentally transformed and persistently influenced our comprehension of spatial and temporal dimensions, much like television and cinema influenced these notions in the 20th century. Similar to the connection between cinema and architecture, in the 21st century, video games not only utilize architecture as an environment or the set, but they also go beyond. In 3D video games, the purpose of space design has evolved from being a mere background to being an essential component that supports the scenario and subtext, providing as a tool for cinematographic narrative. Thus, the gaming industry becomes part of an important relationship with architecture and the history of architecture. The architectural and spatial elements found in our present reality are reproduced and transformed to create alternative, unreal environments. The user/gamer inherits the perspective of either the real or fantastic environment and events that they experience. Within the scope of the article, the transfer of space narrative, perception, and aesthetics by reference to the history of design and architecture was examined in the context of the memory of the place and nostalgia.

Video Games as Concepts and Experiences of the Past

Champion, E. 2021. Virtual Heritage: A Guide, 2021

More and more, people do not experience the past through books, museums, or even television, but through video games. This chapter discusses how these popular entertainment products provide playful and fun experiences of the past-something we refer to here as past-play for the sake of brevity. The video game industry has become a major, fast-moving player when it comes to creating, innovating, and distributing virtual representations of the past (Champion 2015). The study of such playful video game-based products as examples of virtual heritage is part of a growing field, called archaeogaming. Archaeogaming can be generally defined as 'the archaeology of digital games' , with roots in a diverse set of analogue and digital archaeological themes and tools (Reinhard 2018). It also draws in a variety of tools and thinking from game studies, game user research, and computer sciences. Archaeogaming is also a movement born in and out of playful, digital scholarship that studies popular, digital culture but itself also seeks to be part of popular, digital culture (Politopoulos et al. 2019a).

The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage & Video Games

Video games, even though they are one of the present's quintessential media and cultural forms, also have a surprising and many-sided relation with the past. From seminal series like Sid Meier's Civilization or Assassin's Creed to innovative indies like Never Alone and Herald, games have integrated heritages and histories as key components of their design, narrative, and play. This has allowed hundreds of millions of people to experience humanity's diverse heritage through the thrill of interactive and playful discovery, exploration, and (recreation n. Just as video games have embraced the past, games themselves are also emerging as an exciting new field of inquiry in disciplines that study the past. Games and other interactive media are not only becoming more and more important as tools for knowledge dissemination and heritage communication, but they also provide a creative space for theoretical and methodological innovations. The Interactive Past brings together a diverse group of thinkers — including archaeologists, heritage scholars, game creators, conservators and more — who explore the interface of video games and the past in a series of unique and engaging writings. They address such topics as how thinking about and creating games can inform on archaeological method and theory, how to leverage games for the communication of powerful and positive narratives, how games can be studied archaeologically and the challenges they present in terms of conservation, and why the deaths of virtual Romans and the treatment of video game chickens matters. The book also includes a crowd-sourced chapter in the form of a question-chain-game, written by the Kickstarter backers whose donations made this book possible. Together, these exciting and enlightening examples provide a convincing case for how interactive play can power the experience of the past and vice versa.

Aesthetic uses of the past and limits in the reconstruction of historical spaces inside a videogame

Culture & History Digital Journal, 2020

Along the last years we have assisted to the release of a great number of videogames set in the past as, for example, Assassin's Creed: Origins (Ubisoft, 2017). This game offered the player the possibility to tour the city of Alexandria during the first century before Christ. My intention in this text is to develop the use of the past in the reconstruction of urban digital spaces through three video-game sagas, BioShock (Irrational Games y 2K Marin, 2007-2013), Uncharted (Naughty Dog, 2006-2017) and Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft, 2007-2017). Each one of them will serve us to develop and examine the aesthetic uses of the past in the reconstruction of urban digital spaces through the proposed concepts: design, consumption and production. Irrational Games' saga will help us to understand the first concept, the Naughty Dog one the second and the Ubisoft one the third. After these three sections we will elaborate a final section where we will build the video-game as a mass culture medium with other media of same scope and shared features.

Ruins of Excess: Computer Game Images and the Rendering of Technological Obsolescence

Games and Culture, 2021

In this article, we describe three layers of ruins related to computer game technology: in a surface layer, we examine the imagery of ruins in digital games, highlighting game design tools for developing in-game ruination. Secondly, we approach the industrial design model of technological obsolescence as an infrastructural layer that intrinsically demands the production of new provisional spaces for material decay. Lastly, through a waste layer, we unfold the geopolitical dimension of technological obsolescence, calling attention to the transcontinental flows of electronic waste, which also underscores a geological stage of ruination. While exploring these different layers of ruins, we wish to perceive how game design models might relate to different forms of contemporary ruination, inquiring what such material traces have to say as strata of the complex deterioration processes of present-day media.

An Unexpected Archaeology: An Interventionist Strategy for Video Games and Archaeology

Jagged hulks of wrecked cars, discarded soda cans, and gaudy signs advertising a virtual casino littered the digital landscape of Çatalhöyük in Second Life. After a long sum- mer digging at the actual Çatalhöyük, we returned to the virtual version created by the Open Knowledge in the Public Interest group at the University of California under the guidance of Ruth Tringham in 2007....